Welcome to another episode from my editorial diary. Those of you who visit our site regularly will have noticed that we've added two new categories to the top page, the first of which is for interviews. Although I may not be an expert in lean manufacturing myself (not yet anyway) the least I can do is go and interview some people who are and I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to meet Professor Yasuhiro Monden last week.

Professor Yasuhiro Monden is world famous for his excellent book Toyota Production System. Unfortunately, the English version of this book is no longer in print although you can still pick up some second-hand copies on such sites as amazon.com etc. However, the good news is that he is currently in negotiations to have the book published again and I'll keep you updated on that as soon as I get the details. In the meanwhile, Professor Yasuhiro Monden has made time in his busy schedule to allow LMJ a series of interviews covering his ground breaking research on the TPS, which hopefully I'll be able to start posting soon.

Lean Manufacturing Japan's Head Office
This week there was just a long enough break in the rain to take a snap of LMG's editorial office, which despite the wet weather isn't any cleaner. I'm lucky to have an office on the 9th floor with a great view and we have some pretty good sunsets over Tokyo. When the rainy season is over I'll try and get a photo of that as well. As you can imagine tall thin buildings tend to get a little wobbly when we have an earthquake, which isn't helped by being on the top floor either, but least all my books have stayed on the shelf so far.

Although I have a lot experience in computer software engineering and magazine editorial, I'm still a relative new-comer to the world of production scheduling and lean manufacturing. This will have been my third major career change in my life so far and despite all the hard work of having to learn a completely new discipline from scratch (again) it's still great to have an all-new challenge to bite on. Although I wasn't expecting it be quite so chewy.

For many people, the world of manufacturing can be a little confusing at first. It was for me. When I came for the job interview I could pretty much imagine what they meant when they said that a production scheduler would give greater visualization of the shop floor allowing you to improve lead-times and reduce late orders. However, when I sat in front of the computer for the first time and attempted to go through the instruction manual I didn't have a clue what was going on when it started to talk about time constraint methods, automatic replenishment and pegging orders to fluctuating inventory.

So it's for people like me that I created this site, Lean Manufacturing Japan (LMJ), to help explain about the wonderful world of production control techniques. To cut through the mountains of jargon and go beyond the marketing hype to find out about what's going on in the real world of lean manufacturing. That's not to say that I'm going to turn this site into a Lean Manufacturing for Dummies. But what I do intend to do is make sure that this site is of use for everyone with both practical information and actual case studies.

I've only just started but I'll be updating the site weekly with blog entries and new articles so please put us in your bookmark list and look forward to so great features coming soon.

Lean Manufacturing Japan's Editorial Desk
This is where you will find me burning the midnight oil trying to finish my articles just before the deadline approaches.